Found in a musty old book on the bargain rack at the used book story near the U.
I learned from reading the Wise Men – and then looking to see for myself if it was true – that there actually is no such thing as “security.” There is only the idea of it or belief in it, so it seems.
I’d been running around my whole life looking for or trying to get “possession” of something like “permanent security.” Meaning “feeling okay or even better than okay all the time.” Like I had some sort of “right” to being comfortable all (or even most of) the time.
Those guys all asserted that the idea of security is an invention of the same people who came up with gods and religion to give “hope” to the poor slobs at the bottom of cult-ural pyramid. So that the poor slobs would keep doing whatever it was that the guys at the top of the pyramid (like, say, the pharaohs) wanted them to do that wasn’t all that pleasant. Like slave away to make the pharaohs rich, buy the ■■■■ the other slobs made (while the pharaohs take their cut of the profits), and get bloody fighting to defend or even get more wealth for the (wealth-addicted?) pharaohs.
(I try regularly to float this idea in letters to the editor of The New York Times. Not surprisingly, they publish everything else I send them, but they never touch this stuff.) (Hmm. Wonder why.)
I also found out that “comfort” (which is not security, though it is regularly mistaken for such) is just momentary. It lasts however long it lasts, and then we get right back to being uncomfortable. And we call it “insecurity” because we were taught by everyone else living in the “consensus trance” to do so. No one ever questions it.
Almost no one, anyway. You found Foucalt. I think he’d figured all this out, or it sure sounds like it from the bits and pieces of his work I have read.
When I discovered that security was really just an idea, and that it didn’t actually exist – not because I read that, but because I could see that it was actually the case – it was like I stepped out of the Time Warp of Past & Future Mystification and into the present moment. (Which is all there actually is; the past and future being only memories and projections, are they not?)
I was suddenly empowered with an awareness of What Is (vs. What is Not) that has made it possible to be pretty comfortable all the time without having to fix myself with any pricey obsessions, compulsions or addictions. Fear just seemed to evaporate. My “requirements” disappeared. My “expectations” fell away. My “musts,” “oughts,” “shoulds,” “have-to’s” and RULES became meaningless. Along with my “must NOTs,” my “should NOTs,” etc.
It just wasn’t necessary any more to chase the fix IF the fix was more harmful than beneficial. I learned I could sit still and do nothing if I had to, and that it would not make me crazy if that was the only choice I had.
The patients at the asylum who suffer the most seem to me to be those who are still hunting for lasting comfort and security. They want something that is non-existent. Something they were taught to insist must be that is as non-existent as the “CIA’s radio broadcasts into their brains.” They spend their entire waking lives looking for something that doesn’t exist… but must exist because they were taught somewhere to BELIEVE in ■■■■■■■■.